The Bourne Imperative

by Robert Ludlum

  “There is no way to account for the human factor. You should not have stabbed her.”

  “I had no choice!”

  “It seems to me,” Maceo Encarnación said, “there is always a choice.”

  “The heat of the moment precludes choice,” Nicodemo said. “It’s pure instinct.”

  At that moment, the flight attendant came down the aisle on long, lithe legs and, stopping in front of Maceo Encarnación, bent over. He studied her ample cleavage while she whispered in his ear. He nodded, and she went back up the aisle. Both men watched the ball-bearing movement of her shapely buttocks.

  Maceo Encarnación sighed as he took out his mobile, punched in a number, and clapped it to his ear. “Someone will be coming for you,” he said into his phone. “He’ll be in Paris within the hour.”

  Nicodemo, grateful to get off the subject of Rebeka’s knifing, said, “Don Fernando Hererra is dead. Blown up when his private jet crashed outside Paris. Why are we stopping off there when we should be heading on?”

  Maceo Encarnación reversed the phone to show him the news stories. “Martha Christiana will be forwarding the coroner’s report to verify that Hererra was actually on the plane. She always manages to get hold of these reports, the devil knows how. This is a beautiful thing, no? It’s part of her skill set.” He slid the mobile away. “You will go to her the moment we land.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Nicodemo said. “Kill her?”

  “Dios, no!” Maceo Encarnación looked appalled. “Martha Christiana is special to me, do you understand?”

  “I didn’t think anyone was special to you, but what does it matter?”

  Maceo Encarnación regarded him for a moment, as if he were a lower form of life. It seemed clear that the female Mossad agent had somehow gotten under his skin, an inexplicable feat he had thought near to impossible. He wondered what effect her death would have on him. To kill someone you cared about took an enormous amount of emotional fortitude, he knew from experience. Nicodemo had killed many people, of course, most of them in cold blood, some face-to-face, when you tried to catch that ineffable moment when life was transformed into death, when the soul fled into the shadows, when desire became destiny. He banished this disagreeable thought. “Martha Chrisiana is in Paris. Just bring her to me. And, Nicodemo, treat her like the lady she is.”

  “A lady,” Nicodemo echoed. He turned to the window, his gaze far away.

  “Nicodemo,” Maceo Encarnación said, “what is on your mind?” When Nicodemo didn’t answer, he said, “My daughter is on the other side of the world, married, and, one hopes, happy.”

  “I don’t care about Maricruz.”

  You despise her, Maceo Encarnación thought. “What do you care about?” No response. Rebeka again. “I see.”

  “I’m thinking about Jason Bourne,” Nicodemo said after the silence had become unendurable.

  “What about him?”

  “Jason Bourne represents more than just a problem. He could be the end of us.”

  “Calm yourself.” This wasn’t about Jason Bourne, and Maceo Encarnación knew it.

  Nicodemo, restless in his seat, continued to stare out the Perspex window. Despite the jet’s speed, the clouds seemed to drift past, as if in a dream. “We don’t even know whether Rebeka is dead.”

  Now we get to it, Maceo Encarnación thought. “From what you tell me, it seems unlikely she has survived, even if Bourne somehow managed to get her to a hospital, which he hasn’t. I have people looking; they would know if she had been admitted.”

  “Bourne has resources. A private doctor, maybe.”

  “From how you described the wound, no doctor could have saved her. She would have needed a full-fledged trauma team, and even then…” He allowed the thought to run its own course. “Forget her. That chapter is closed.”

  Nicodemo was brooding. “But not on Bourne.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t leave me in Mexico City to deal with him.”

  “Deal with him?” Maceo Encarnación echoed. “I listened to you; we tried that once. You see how that turned out. Rebeka is dead and Bourne is still at large. Now one must create a real plan, execute it, at the conclusion of which Bourne dies. This is precisely what has been put in place. Anunciata is seeing to it.”

  In many ways Dick Richards’s skills mimicked the finest watchmaker’s. The difference was that he worked in the world of cyberspace, a place of infinite area, but without dimension. He had managed to quarantine his own Trojan and was now accessing the Core Energy network, where he had stored the preliminary codes that would activate the potent virus he had inserted like a drop of ink into its cyber heart of ones and zeros. Those codes were too complex even for his memory, and there was no way he would risk being caught with a rogue thumb drive or SD card. Besides, the attack had to seem to come from outside Treadstone, traced back to the Chinese. He could only seed the false ISP trail with a code that originated outside the Treadstone intranet.

  Despite the canned air emanating from the vents in the ceiling, sweat rolled down his sides from under his arms, slid down the rills of his bent back as he sat, tensed, filled with a tremulous excitement, but also a terrible dread.

  This was his big test, his ticket to the major leagues of hacking. When he pulled this off, he would prove indispensable to Tom Brick and Core Energy. This, more than anything, was what he wanted. Working for the government was soul-destroying. Other people took credit for his breakthroughs, he received a puny salary, and the president treated him like a pet dog, occasionally stroked but never allowed up on the furniture where his human masters sat in daily judgment. His transfer to Treadstone had unexpectedly improved his lot. Though Soraya and, to some extent, Peter treated him with suspicion and contempt, he could not blame them. He had been sent to spy on them. He deserved their suspicion and contempt. But he also saw their willingness to give him the credit due him, if he could prove himself loyal.

  True, Brick often treated him like a dog, but sometimes not. And he paid a shitload more than the government ever did—or could. Up until now, Richards had been trying to be faithful to three masters, but the tension was tearing him apart. He could no longer live this way. He needed to choose sides.

  But what about Peter? How had he managed to infiltrate Core Energy? How did he know about Tom Brick? If Richards was to choose a side, then he had to decide what to do about Peter. Should he tell Peter everything he knew about Brick, Core Energy, and the secret entity that did its bidding? Should he, on the other hand, reveal Peter’s real identity to Brick? Prior to working at Treadstone, the choice would have been a no-brainer. But now Treadstone had stymied him. He had to admit he liked it here. Unaccountably, the atmosphere was more like the private sector. There was little or no red tape, the co-directors saw to that.

  On the horns of this dilemma, he continued his work, but his mind was elsewhere, so much so that he almost missed it. Some instinct, lodged in the most primitive part of his brain, the part humans counted on for survival, sent out a silent alarm that jerked him back to full concentration. Something was wrong. Immediately, he took his hands off the computer keyboard. Staring at the code he had been typing in, he felt an icy chill crawling down his spine. For a long time then, he did nothing but stare at the screen. Slowly, he drew his hands back from their position over the keyboard to rest them in his lap, as if he were a penitent, praying.

  The normal sounds of the Treadstone office—hushed voices, the hum of machines, the careful tread of shoes—came to him as if from a great distance. His mobile phone ringing made him start. He picked it up.

  “Richards, it’s Anderson.”

  His guilty heart leaped into his throat, closing it down for a terrifying moment. “Yessir,” he eventually managed to croak.

  “Made any progress?”

  “The, uh, the Trojan is quarantined, sir.”

  “Good deal.”

  “It just…it’s proving more diff
icult than I imagined to get rid of. There’s…There seems to be some kind of mechanism embedded inside it.” The moment he said this, he knew it was a mistake.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Anderson thundered.

  He had been trying to absolve himself of any culpability when the virus struck, but it seemed he had only inflamed Anderson.

  “Goddammit, Richards. Answer me!”

  “I’m dealing with the problem, sir. It’s just going to take more time than I had expected.”

  “Now that the Trojan’s quarantined, don’t mess with it further. I don’t want something else to be triggered.”

  Oh, you fool, Richards berated himself.

  “Your number one priority is to find out how that fucking thing jumped our firewall, got me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ll be back at HQ in an hour. I want an answer by then.”

  Richards’s hand was trembling as he cut the connection. He tried to calm himself, but his mind was racing so fast that gathering his thoughts was like trying to herd cats. Pushing back his chair, he got up and, on anxiety-stiffened legs, stalked to the closest window. He stood with his forehead pressed against the cool glass. He felt as if he were burning up with fever. It seemed to him now that he had leaped into the abyss without thinking anything through, without any understanding of his capacity to bear up under a life dominated by mendacity and duplicity.

  With a barely audible moan, he lurched away from the window and stumbled back to his desk. He now had what seemed an impossible deadline. Anderson would be back in less than an hour. By that time, he needed to understand his situation and find a way out.

  Back at his desk, he ran his hands through his hair while he stared at the screen. What was wrong? There was the most minute lag between his pressing the keys and seeing the code on the screen. Changing screens, he checked the hardware through the Control Panel, but no recent additions had been made. Device Manager produced the same results. But when he checked the computer’s CPU usage, he saw an unusual spike upward that dated back to the time he had started working. He felt a sudden rush of blood to his head. API-based keyloggers added to the CPU usage as they polled and recorded each keystroke.

  That bastard Anderson, Richards thought fiercely. He had an API-based keylogger inserted into the software, which picked up every keystroke Richards made. The whole thing was premeditated, a set-up. But how? There was only one answer: Peter Marks. Marks had betrayed him, had had no faith that he might give Tom Brick up to Treadstone.

  A great rage filled Richards. He shook with the force of it. He looked one last time at the screen of incomplete virus code and thought: Fuck it. Fuck him. Fuck them all.

  Without another thought, he disabled the keylogger software and continued with his code, working without even seeming to breathe. In the back of his mind, he prayed Anderson would show up early.

  Almost fifty minutes later, six minutes before Anderson was due to arrive, Richards set the last section of the code in place. All he needed to do now was press the ENTER key and the virus would flood the on-site Treadstone servers, bringing down the entire network, freezing the communication channels, fouling the operating system itself.

  He stood up, grabbed his coat, and, with one stab downward, hit ENTER. Then he crossed the room, went out the door, took the elevator to the lobby, and walked out, on his way back to his life with Tom Brick.

  In the smoky distance, sirens wailed. By the sound of them, vehicles were racing toward the Basilica de Guadelupe. The Mass was finished. Someone had found the body of el Enterrador.

  “I don’t know where Maceo Encarnación and Nicodemo were going,” Anunciata said. “But I know someone who might.”

  “Tell me,” Bourne said. He kept a sharp eye on the street, on the lookout for police cars.

  “I’ll take you there.”

  “No.” Bourne looked at her. “Your involvement is at an end.” He produced the wallet he had taken from Rebeka’s body. “It’s time for you to leave.” The last of Rebeka would go toward helping someone escape into a new life. He knew she would have liked that.

  He opened the wallet, showing Anunciata the contents. “There’s money here, more than enough to set you up somewhere far away from Mexico. And a passport.” He paged through it. “You see my friend’s photo. You can pass for her. You’re more or less the same height and weight. Find a good salon, get your hair cut and dyed to match hers. A little makeup from a professional. That’s all you need.”

  “Mexico is my home.”

  “It will also be your death. Leave. Now. After today, it will be too late.”

  Anunciata, holding the keys to her new life in the palms of her hands, looked up at him. Her eyes were swollen with tears. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You deserve a chance at a new life,” he said.

  “I don’t know whether I have the strength—”

  “It’s what your mother wanted for you.”

  The tears welled, falling. The sirens kept up a wail that could have come from her.

  “There’s something…”

  Bourne waited, then he engaged her eyes. “Anunciata?”

  “Nothing.” She looked up. “It’s nothing.” She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Now,” Bourne said, folding her fingers over the wallet, “tell me who I need to see.”

  Salazar Flores was an aviation mechanic. He worked mainly on private planes, most notably Maceo Encarnación’s Bombardier Global 5000. Bourne found him on the job in the maintenance hangar at the private airfield Encarnación used to house the Bombardier, exactly where Anunciata said he’d be at this time of the morning.

  Flores was a short, sharp-eyed man in his middle years. His jowly cheeks were smeared with grease and his spatulate hands were permanently dyed by the fluids he used every day. He looked up sideways when Bourne approached him, then he stood and, wiping his hands on a greasy rag he pulled out of a back pocket of his overalls, faced the newcomer.

  “How can I help you?” he said.

  “I’m buying a Gulfstream SPX,” Bourne said, “and I’m thinking of housing it here.”

  “You got the wrong guy.” Flores indicated the office building across the runway from the hangar where they stood. “You need to talk to Castillo. He’s the boss.”

  “I’m more interested in talking with you,” Bourne said. “You’ll be taking care of my plane.”

  Flores eyed Bourne appraisingly. “How’d you hear about me?”

  “Anunciata.”

  “Really?”

  Bourne nodded.

  “How’s her mom?”

  “Maria-Elena died yesterday.”

  Bourne seemed to have passed some kind of test. Flores nodded. “An inexplicable tragedy.”

  Bourne had no intention of telling Flores just how explicable Maria-Elena’s death was. “Did you know her well?”

  Flores regarded him for a moment. “I need a smoke.”

  He led Bourne out of the clanging hangar where three other mechanics were at work, out onto the airfield. Keeping to the side of the runway, he shook out a cigarette, offered it to Bourne, then stuck it into his mouth and lit up.

  He stared up at the high clouds as if looking for a sign. “You’re a Gringo, so I suppose you know Anunciata better.” He let smoke drift out between his lips. “Maria-Elena had a difficult life. Anunciata didn’t like to talk about it.” He shrugged bull shoulders. “Maybe she didn’t know. Maria-Elena was very protective of her daughter.”

  “She wasn’t the only one,” Bourne said, thinking of the conversation he had overheard in the rectory of the Basilica de Guadelupe between Anunciata and el Enterrador. “Maceo Encarnación kept her like a hothouse flower.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Flores looked around as if at any moment one of Maceo Encarnación’s men was going to pop out of the shadows like a ghoul.

  Bourne shrugged. “I assumed you knew the two of them well.”

  Flores took a last suc
k on his cigarette, dropped it, shredding it beneath the heel of his boot. “I have to get back to work.”

  “Are we getting into dangerous territory?”

  Flores shot him a look. “Whatever it is you want, I can’t help you.”

  “This can help you, though.” Bourne spread the five hundred-dollar bills between them.

  “¡Madre de Dios!” Flores puffed out his cheeks, exhaled heartily through pursed lips. He looked up at Bourne. “What is it you want?”

  “Only one thing,” Bourne said. “Maceo Encarnación took off this morning. Where was he headed?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Bourne stuffed the bills into the pocket of his overalls. “I’m sure your wife and kids could use some new clothes.”

  Flores looked around again, still jumpy, though no one was in earshot and those who could be seen weren’t paying them the slightest attention. “I could lose my job…or my head. Then where would my wife and kids be?”

  Bourne added another five hundred. “A couple of iPads will make you a hero.”

  Flores, visibly sweating, ran a hand through his hair. Bourne could see the tug of war between greed and fear being played out on his face. Still Flores hesitated. It was time to play his last card.

  “It was Anunciata who suggested I talk to you about Encarnación’s destination.”

  At this, Flores’s eyes opened wide. “She was—”

  “She wants you to tell me.” A jet turned onto the head of the runway, its engines building to a roar. Bourne took a step closer. “It’s important, Señor Flores. It involves Maria-Elena’s death.”

  Flores’s face registered shock. “What d’you mean?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Bourne said, “and you don’t want to know.”

  Flores licked his lips, took one last glance around the airfield, and nodded. As the jet shot down the runway and, in a veil of noise and fumes, lifted off, he leaned forward and whispered a word in Bourne’s ear.